Dead Force Rising (7 page)

“You had better stand down Bell,”
Hark suggested, “Otherwise there might not be enough of you left for the medics
to identify.”

“She certainly looks better in that
uniform than you, Beamer,” Caleb said as he took a few steps back, his hands rising
in surrender because of the dangerous glare in John's eyes.

Guiding Thorn out of the room and
down the corridor toward the meeting room, he sighed a bit in relief. John
hadn’t expected the ugly feeling of jealousy to rear its nasty head,
threatening to send his beast into a deadly fit of protective rage. The whole
idea both confused and worried him. What if he couldn't control the monsters
lurking inside? He could never live with himself if he harmed Thorn.

“Sergeant, Miss Grant, please come in
and have a seat,” General Strait called as they entered the meeting room.

****

Thorn felt odd dressed
in a
strangers clothes. Of course, walking through a room
filled with wide-eyed soldiers did little to relieve her apprehension in the
least. And now she had to face down the General who she would guess would be
none too happy to see her in this secret place. She couldn't understand how her
world, so simple only a few days earlier, had so quickly turned into one hot,
weird mess.

“Miss Grant, I would first like to
give you my upmost apology for the traumatic events in which you were exposed
last evening,” he told her with sincerity. “It does however create somewhat of
a problem for us. We’d hoped to keep the existence of these creatures and this
unit under wraps.”

“Believe me, General I would never
tell what I've seen. Even if I did, who would believe it? I would find myself
wrapped in a straight jacket with a nice set of guards escorting me to the
funny farm,” Thorn told him as John handed her a glass of water and took the
seat at her side.

“That being true, we also have the
issue of your recently deceased partner. When I sent the clean-up crew, his
body was gone. I’ve pulled some strings to keep it out of the press and your
employer believes the two of you have been performing a special service with
the base. But I’m afraid Keith Boyd might have converted.”

“Converted? What do you mean
converted?” Thorn asked panicked. Did he mean Keith was now one of those
things, those vampires?

“Relax, sweetie,” John attempted to
calm her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t tell me relax and stop calling
me sweetie. He means Keith is going to be one of those damn monsters, doesn’t
he?” Thorn yelled. She saw the hurt in John’s eyes at her reference to monsters.
He was one of those “things” and he’d never been anything but kind to her. It
was an unnecessary generalization that hurt someone she was just beginning to
find a connection with.

“I’m sorry,” she said taking a deep
breath. “I didn't mean to imply that...”

“Forget it.” He cut her off,
withdrawing his hand from her shoulder and sitting back in his chair, obviously
hurt. “We’ll have to hunt him down and dispatch him. Do you have any idea where
he might go?”

“I don’t know, back to the station
maybe?” Thorn told them as she looked down into her glass, ashamed of her
outburst.

“I’ve already put a unit on that,”
General Striate informed them. “He hasn’t showed up there.”

“He just broke up with his long time
girlfriend, Rachel, last week. Maybe he went there. She lives over on Horner,” Thorn
said after some thought.

“Do you know the exact address?”
Striate asked as he grabbed the phone receiver off the table.
 

“One thirteen,
apartment
 
four
I think.”

Thorn sat in silence as she listened
to the General talk on the phone and John rap his fingers in a cadence like
rhythm on the tabletop. So much for exploring the attraction she felt for the Sergeant
any further. As it stood, she would be lucky if the man even spoke to her
again.

“Miss Grant, since you're now aware
of our little operation here, I have been given the authority to see that you
join the unit as a civilian corpsman. You’ll be assigned to work with Dr. Hough
drawing blood and administering basic aid. You'll answer directly to him on
medical issues and report to me on all matters occurring inside the medical
wing.” The General shuffled through some papers in a manila folder as he spoke,
his voice and tone saying that
this
 
wasn't
actually a request but a fact.

Thorn wanted to argue, to say he had
no right to force her to stay in this place and be part of this madness.
However, she didn't say a word, only nodded her head in silent acceptance. Her
brother, Thomas, once said it was the duty of every person to rise to the
occasion when their country and way of life needed them, despite the risk or
challenges ahead. Thorn thought perhaps this was that occasion. She would've
liked to say that this sense of duty was the only reason, but it would've been
false. The idea of not having the opportunity to make things right between her
and John was also a deciding factor. She owed him her life, not her scorn.

“Sergeant Rose will take you down to
Miss William's office to take care of all the paperwork and such. Welcome to
the Nest, Miss Grant.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Sign here, and initial here and here,”
Miss Williams told Thorn as they completed the last of what had to be a tree's
worth of paperwork.

John had brought her here and simply
left. She knew he was upset with her, with her careless statement and she had no
idea how to make it better. It wasn’t as if she could take it back. It came out
of her mouth and upset or not, her words
had
 
hurt
him.

“You'll be issued seven sets of uniforms
which you're to wear on duty. Here are your ID and clearance cards. We are not
permitted to leave the nest unescorted, so I have an arrangement with the
guards to visit the PX every Wed. in case you wish to join me.”

Was she serious? They expected her to
reside here as though it were a prison.

“There's a common room on level three
with a pool table, large screens and computers. We are each also issued a
laptop but be aware all your action on it is monitored. So I suggest no
cybersex,” Miss Williams continued as she handed Thorn a map and copies of the
paperwork. “Payday is the 15
^th
and 30
^th
and it will be
direct deposited into an account which I'll set up for you. The General has
arranged for someone to take you topside so you can collect some personal
affects.”

The woman stopped then and gave Thorn
a soft smile which didn't quiet reach her eyes. “Welcome to the Nest. It will
be nice not to be the only female in this fish bowl. I’m Karen.”

“Thorn,” she said, reaching her hand
out to shake the long, thin hand of the woman who was obviously in charge of
all the clerical aspects of this place.

She was a pretty woman, about thirty
with short, auburn hair cut into a sassy bob and she had deep green eyes. Thorn
hoped they could be friends since the two were seriously outnumbered down here.

A sharp knock on the door stopped any
further conversation as John entered the room and gave Karen a nod in
acknowledgement.

“Are you ready?” He asked. “I want to
get back quickly so I can take the rest of the team out to hunt down Boyd
before he infects anyone.”

Thorn could hear the agitation his voice.
He was still angry with her. Standing, she told Karen she would talk to her
later and followed him out and toward the elevator which would return them to
the surface. The silence between them was numbing even in the short distance.
She didn't know how to fix this, only that she needed to.

“Get only what you can’t live
without. We’ll have the rest packed up and put into storage for you.” John told
her once they were in the jeep and headed toward her street. “Your room is much
smaller than mine so you won’t have much space.”

“
l'll
only grab
a small box or two. Not like I’ll need much. They arrange for everything,”
Thorn said, staring out the window, noticing it had snowed more since the
previous night and the world around them looked like a sparkling wonderland.
With only a week until Christmas, she wondered if they would allow her to go
see Caroline and Becka for the holiday. She hated the thought of not seeing
Becka open the pile of gifts already wrapped and sitting in her hall closet. It
was something she would've to take up with the General or perhaps John when he
was no longer sore at her, which might not be for a while, if ever.

“Here you go, madam. Do you need us
to accompany you?” The young guard asked as they pulled into the small driveway
outside her home.

“That won’t be necessary,” John
inserted before she could respond. “I’ll be accompanying her inside.”

“Yes, sir.”

****

John’s emotions ran heavy as he
walked Thorn to her house. He’d thought they shared something, certain she’d
felt it the same as him.
Still, her words wrung loudly in his
mind.
She thought him a monster. How could he ever expect her to have
feelings for the beast she thought him to be?

Stepping through the front door, he
looked around. The place seemed cold and lonely
and
 
wasn't
anything like he expected. The
furnishings were small and he wondered if she even used any of it. John stood
in her living room staring at the cluster of family pictures that crowded the
wall as he heard her take to the steps.

He couldn't help but smile at the
images of Thorn and Thomas at various ages along with a couple he assumed
were
their parents. How happy they all seemed. He recalled
Thomas talking about his parent’s death from an automobile accident once when
the two of them were pulling duty in a rain soaked foxhole. Thorn was only
sixteen when the happy life she knew was torn to shreds. Thomas, who’d just
turned eighteen, quit school during his senior year so he could get a job and
support them.
 
When Thorn started college
a few years later, Thomas enlisted.

John felt a need to protect her,
fight the self-imposed loneliness that her home reflected. Turning, he headed
for the stairs, taking them two at a time to reach her. Thorn was standing with
her back to him, a small red suitcase in front of her on the bed. Moving up
behind her, John put his hands on the flare of her hips and leaned down to
breath the scent of her deep.

“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,”
she sighed as
he
slide both hands further around so
they rested across her abdomen. “I don’t think, I mean, I know you’re not a
monster.”

“There's a beast inside me, Thorn.
Something dark and unnatural.”
He turned her in his arms so
they stood face-to-face, their lips only inches apart. “But I would never harm
you. I promise, Thorn.”

He took a deep breath against her
skin before reaching around her to sweep her overnight bag to the floor with a
thud.
 
Only one thing stuck in his mind
at the moment, he wanted Thorn here and now.

****

Thorn’s body trembled with desire,
her cunt becoming hot and wet. Never had a man made her feel so wanton. “What,
what are you going to do?” She asked with a mixture of apprehension and excitement
as she licked her lips.

“Whatever you want me to, Thorn.” He
told her as he brushed his lips gently across hers, teasing her mouth.

“I want you, John,” she said in a
trembling voice that made him want to scream in triumph. “Make love to me.”

“Are you certain? I’m not the type to
play easy with what I want and I want you so badly,” he admitted.

She worried her lower lip as he
lowered her to the bed. Crouching
overtop
her, he
grinned down and Thorn could see the sharp edges of his canines. He made quick
work of her clothing, leaving her laying before him in nothing more than her
undergarments in a matter of seconds.

She could feel his hands run across
her tucked waist and strong fingers loop into the string sides of her panties,
breaking them as though they had been made of paper, baring the soft flesh of
her shaved pussy to his eyes “I don’t know where to start.”

Thorn felt his hands move to the
insides of her thighs, pushing her legs far apart as his weigh shifted on the
mattress until both of her legs rested across his shoulders and his hot breath
danced across her throbbing cunt. His flattened tongue slid across her already
damp pussy lips, gently at first then with a sudden growl, as he pushed deep
into her and lapped at the flood of moisture that coated her. Moaning loudly,
she attempted to grind her cunt against his mouth but he held her hips tight,
refusing to allow her to move. Instead he forced one thick digit past the
muscle rings of her tight ass and finger
fucked
 
her
as he fed on her cunt. Fastening
his mouth to the tight bud of her clit, he tugged then sucked the pulsating
bundle of nerves between his lips making her breathing quicken and her body
tremble in impending release. Just as the first quiver began to move through
her body, he stopped and moved away from her, making her cry out at the loss, a
cry she snuffled when she realized he was undressing.